India won by an innings and 64 runs
PLAYER OF THE MATCH : Kuldeep Yadav
Batter
Bowler
That, ladies and gents, is a wrap of England's tour of India. Just like the thrills and spills of the sport, we - the text commentators - too have our moments of ups and downs. On that note, we would like to take a moment to thank you for sending in the awesomest comments and giving us a kick on our backs during our patchy comm stints. While the Test curtains go down, the IPL curtains have just started their warm up. All of that to unfold in a couple of weeks. Hope you'll liked whatever that's scribbled over the course of this series. On behalf of all our wonderful team members, this is Raju Peethala and Ramakrishnan MS bidding cheers and goodbye!! And not to forget our sharp-eyed scoring expert Venkatesh AV as well.
Bazball. Bash ball. Bang ball. You can have all these fancy incongruous labels to the brand of cricket you want to play. Whether it is the hype from the media or the heights of madness caused by flabbergasted approach, Stokes and McCullum certainly had their "bed of roses" phase. 4 series wins, 3 drawn series' in the space of 13 months. Whoa! A lot of it must have felt like a dream given the well-documented red-ball struggles of England prior to B-Mac's appointment. The road rash had to meet its burnout at some point. When England won in Hyderabad, there were theories floating around the lofty standards Stokes men set regarding the approach and ambience of Test cricket.
Six weeks later, the sky-high theories slowly faded into some sort of sympathetic trolls. And what exactly happened in between? India, despite being thrown into tumultuous territories on occasions, found a way to sink the scorching Bazball sphere into the mire. And as if to add an extra cherry to their cake, they dismantled the English audacity into a speck of sand at the hilly heels of Dharamsala. It's the first series loss for the Stokes-B-Mac duo and one that will surely sting for many more months to come. Especially after starting on a promising note and having thrown positions of dominance to be sandwiched by the spin-trio ultimately. To rub more rock salt into those soaring wounds, just 2 Test wins (in India) in the last decade for England.
When the English selectors table a post-tour review, one factor that doesn't escape their minds is the number-game. And this (purely imaginary stuff and not to be taken seriously) is how the conversation might unfold. Narrated and directed by our very own Raju Peethala
Selector 1: That first Test was "oh so good," but what about the rest?
Selector 2: Our lads are not good enough, surely.
Selector 3: Phewf! Let's have a quick look at the numbers before we roll further
Analyst: Errrr....sorry...a whack of Error 404 on screen. Back in a moment
S 1: Oops! I mistook that 404 for total number of runs from our boys for the last 4 Tests
Analyst: Apologies. It's sorted and here is the data...
S 1: I see, Crawley has done wonderfully well. Numbers or otherwise, he has shown the mettle to bat and shown decent application against spin
S 2: Couldn't agree more. Lots of talks about him failing to convert starts, so maybe that is one area he can work on.
S 3: Moving on, we had lots of hopes from our sweep-master Duckett, but barring that Rajkot 153 lad's looked a bit hurried against spin.
Analyst: Fair point. Ben scored just 190 from the rest of his 9 innings and got out to pace only twice.
S 2: What about the other Bens though?
Analyst: I'm afraid their numbers are quite unobtrusive
S 1: Let's talk about skipper Ben
Analyst: Just one short of double hundred....199 from 10 innings at an average of 19.90. Barring that 70 in Hyderabad, it's 129 from 9 innings
S 2: Crikey! That's hideous to say the least. And he seemed a twirling toy against spin in the last 3 Tests. Quite disappointing I must say.
S 1: Foakes keeping was class, and despite showing a solid defensive technique and application, would have loved more runs from him